Board Reporting Package: Essential Guide for Effective Board Governance

Managers and board secretaries deliver good financial reporting for boards. But everything beyond financials, such as strategy, risk management, regulatory oversight, cybersecurity, or talent, should catch up seriously.

PwC has revealed that less than 50% of boards are satisfied with such pre-read board papers and board briefings.

The question is, how do you do effective board reporting? Do board members and executives capture the true purpose of board packs? This article explores the main elements of an effective board reporting package and describes several practices to make it more digestible.

What is board reporting package?

The board reporting packages provide board members with up-to-date information on the company’s health, department highlights, budget utilization, revenue targets, and recent board actions. Let’s briefly name a few benefits of reporting packages when managing the board:

• Bird’s eye view of corporate matters
• Thorough risk management
• Well-informed strategic decisions

10 key components of a board reporting package

Let’s explore the key components of an effective board pack:

1. Executive summary
2. Agenda and previous meeting recap
3. Financial statements and reports
4. Operational and performance reports
5. Risk management and compliance reports
6. Strategic initiatives and project updates
7. Market and competitive analyses
8. CEO report
9. Governance and policy documents
10. Board resolutions and action items

Executive summary

A board report package with all board briefing materials and topic reports can sometimes exceed 200-400 pages. So an executive summary is necessary for long packages. It briefly overviews key findings and gives enough information for informed decisions.

Agenda, previous meeting minutes

The board meeting agenda outlines the key topics and discussions of the official board meeting. In turn, meeting minutes from the last board meeting help the leadership team get the necessary context and align on the discussion topics.

Financial statements and reports

A board financial reporting package covers the company’s financial and operational data, like income statements, balance sheets, budgets, and revenue trends. The covered period of financial reports depends on the company’s reporting schedule and gets aligned with the board chair before the scheduled board meeting.

Operational and performance reports

Operational board packages highlight key performance indicators and challenges of the company’s department or business unit. While daily activities are beyond board duties, performance reports provide the necessary context to strategic conversations in board meetings.

Risk management and compliance reports

Compliance matters need significantly more attention from boards than they usually receive. As much as 84% of boards admit the absence of effective risk and compliance strategies. In contrast, top-performing boards regularly prepare risk-management and compliance reports. 

Strategic initiatives and project updates

A comprehensive board package overviews digital transformation, market expansion, sustainability, and other relevant initiatives. Management reports on strategic initiatives explore key milestones, performance metrics, and challenges of given projects.

Market and competitive analyses

Board directors and investors expect reports on the competitive landscape and the company’s market position. It facilitates major corporate decisions, such as acquisitions, mergers, and divestments.

CEO report

A CEO executive summary covers strategic, financial, and operational matters for a specific period. It delivers a broader perspective on company highlights, such as product or service updates. Some of its contents may overlap with separate board reporting contents, like strategic, operational, risk management, cybersecurity, or monthly financial reports.

Governance and policy documents

Reviewing corporate policies and documents helps to maintain their validity and compliance with existing laws and regulations. Moreover, a quick recap of policies and guidelines provides a baseline for performance, compliance, and risk evaluations.

Board resolutions and action items

Board resolutions and action items provide a formal record of past decisions and help with further actions and decisions. It’s crucial not to overly emphasize past decisions unless specifically required by the purpose of the meeting.

Board reporting package best practices

Let’s outline a few board reporting best practices for structure, conciseness, and readability.

Common board reporting challenges

Let’s explore five common challenges of the board reporting process.

Tools and resources for board reporting

Delivering materials earlier, reducing the size of packages, and providing more meaningful metrics are among the top requests to the management and board admin team.

Fortunately, there are a few tools and resources to make governance reporting more concise, effective, and digestible. For instance, an effective template can considerably improve your board meeting reports.

A standardized reporting structure ensures consistency, comprehensive coverage, and clarity. Download a free comprehensive template with a board pack checklist for consistent and efficient reports.

If you want to elevate other aspects of reports, such as timely delivery, easy last-minute changes, and seamless coordination, board reporting software will help tremendously. Board portals allow you to do the following:

• Automatically compile existing reports into digital board packs with auto-generated TOC
• Coordinate departments through reminders, tasks, and activity dashboards
• Collect source materials in a cloud repository with unlimited storage
• Edit statements without disrupting the report’s structure
• Manage file versions
• Protect the board pack preparation process with access permissions, two-factor authentication, and military-grade encryption

Bottom line

• Board reporting packages deliver meaningful context to the company’s metrics and facilitate productive meeting outcomes.
• Executive summary, meeting agenda, meeting minutes, financial, operational, compliance, market positioning, CEO report, board resolutions, and strategic solutions are key aspects of prudent company updates.
• Page limits, standardized formats, info highlights, and visual aids make reporting packages clear and concise.
• Use templates and board management software when preparing board reports. Board portals secure board meeting documentation and simplify all steps of preparations, from tasks and compilation to delivery and last-minute changes.